


One day

by Singittome



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Study, Dysfunctional Family, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 06:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7923310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Singittome/pseuds/Singittome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four pairs of siblings. Four beginnings. Four stories. Four endings.<br/>One day, we'll be old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One day

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a piece of art I've seen a long time ago. Also, Unalaq's ideology from Desna's part is slightly inspired by another fic I've read a long time ago, sorry for no credit I can't remember the name or the author.

There's past and there's present, but where does the former end and the latter begin? Oh spirits, by the time I finish this sentence, the moment I opened my mouth to speak will be in the past!  
One day we'll be old, my brother. And the sea will wash away our footsteps, and the wind will coat the echoes of our childish laughter and carry them away.

.

(I, Sokka.)

One day we'll be old, my brother, you had said to me.

I hadn't understood. I'd thought that for eternity I would watch you with envy as you bend small streams of water and shake snow from the wooly hem of your parka, and that we would run around even when we're old and grey playing in our father's kayak and listen to Gran-Gran's stories about what it felt to be young and alive while that was exactly what we were.

You were always one step ahead of me. You were a waterbender, and you could bend the world to your will. You could break anything – the ocean, a glacier, the Avatar – with a single fist.

I've always tried my best to follow your footsteps. Even though I was older, you have been the one mending me. 

I have asked you, on the day that war took our mother and tide took our father "are you going to leave me too, Katara?'

I see you still as you were then, a young girl with ancient eyes, swearing that even if the world isn't always good, she would protect me.

You were the image of deception. You have lied to me.

You are a face in the gallery of people I have loved and lost: mother, father, Yue, Suki, Aang. I haven't lost you in the obvious way – your body remained on Earth, but your spirit drifted away with him, at least for me.

At sixty-four, I was thousands of years old, at sixteen, I was thousands of years old. I've aged millenia in a year, my sister, and so have you.

We've lived our whole life in those days we spent on Appa, you, me, Aang and Toph. We've laughed and cried and lived and died, only that we haven't. It was beautiful and sad.

Don't you know that I still wake up sometimes, craving the feeling of wind on my skin and soft fur under my fingertips and the smell of adventure in the air? Only that he is gone  
and you are all gone, and I'm tapping in the dark.

We're old now, my sister. Won't you come back for me?

There's only one figure I see guiding me towards the light as I carry on, and she doesn't have your voice and your dark, flowing hair. She has the skin of moonlight and the kindest smile saying that she had been waiting for me.

Spirits, I'm falling!

.

(II, Tarrlok)

One day we'll be old, my brother, you have said to me.

I haven't understood! I had no idea what it ment to be old, old, to have a life behind you and to think oh. I have accomplished something. And I never will.

Please forgive me. Where are we? I see a vast expanse of a shimmering ocean, and it reminds me of home, of where icy chunks filled the majestic sea that was so cold that bending the water from its depths made your teeth clatter.

I remember how we used to learn to bend, together.

You used to tell that there's a queen of all the sea life living underwater, a majestic spirit, how she sits inside a giant seashell on her throne of pearls and rules her deep dark underworld, on the very bottom of the ocean where no man can step, and from distance you could only see darkness, but if she were merciful, she would let you come closer and you would see the light of one thousand million fosforescent moons and you would sit by her side as her king.

I used to believe that, If I dove down into the black water, the cold would retreat and I would be able to see her smile.

Look at us, brother. We are ghosts.

I used to dread the moment when I would kneel before you and you would take my bending, but in the moment you did, I could see you. All of you.

I could see everything!

Is there a chance that we will be forgiven? Our crimes are too great for this world, we carry on our shoulders ourselves and our father before us. Do you remember how we swore to leave him behind? How we were scared of growing cold and how it made us senseless.

Ghosts follow you overseas.

Can you forgive me, brother?

I hold in my hand the strength of a lightning, I hold on my palm the light of the world, on my command ships sink and men fall and a single flick of my wrist brings armies to their knees.

I shall convict us!

With us, die our ghosts. Let there be a flame!

.

(III, Zuko)

One day we'll be old, my brother, you have said to me.

I haven't understood. We both lived in the moment, igniting sparks on our palms and holding on, ever so slightly, to each other.

It wasn't alike you to speak of the future. You were a young girl who carried a forest fire in her eyes, and you would shine as bright as a dying star if it wasn't for our family's curse.

I could see it back then, in you. I can see now that I haven't escaped it either. 

I am an old man, Azula, and you are an old woman.

You break kings and you shatter crowns. You conquer kingdoms and you stomp promises. Every time you do so, you break yourself a little, too.

Everytime I look you in the eye, I fret that I will ruin the cover of still, hot air and free that raging storm you hide, the one that burns dragons' hearts. I've learned to detest you, but the amber of your gaze takes me back to the house on the beach.

Only one time have you spoken to me, truly spoken to me, and it was by the house on the beach. You have said to me that you were a monster. With no remorse, with no anger, you have merely said it as a fact. The fact hadn't hurt me – I knew it for a very long time – it hurt me that you knew it.

Do you still know it? Can you regret?

I know that I was never included in the tight, if not mycroscopic circle of people you loved. Have you ever loved anyone, really? I don't know. I've been sitting by your cell for seventy years, and I know nothing.

I know nothing of who you've been. Ty Lee is the only one who knows, and she keeps it to herself.

Have I broken you? Has she? We don't know. Do you know that you are still the subject of our late-night conversations, the Fire Lord and the Kyoshi warrior drinking over a mad sister?

Your eyes aren't like amber anymore. They look like sugar glass, rid of color and clouded with age. As if someone had turned off the lantern behind your pale irises.  
Click. There's darkness.

.

(IV, Desna)

One day we'll be old, my brother, you have said to me.

I haven't understood. I thought that all there is to be, we are now. I had you and you had me – something to contemplate. I've heard stories – of Iroh and Ozai, of Tonraq and Unalaq from father himself. 

He said that if there are two, one consumes the other.

Raava and Vaatu. Light and darkness. Spiritual and material. Ocean and moon. 

One shall always pull the strings, and the other shall dance like a marionette. 

He knew nothing.

I've asked myself for a while, when I was young, who pushes and who pulls out of the two of us. 'Neither.' you have said. 'And both.'

You've always been much more insightful than I was. Worlds ahead of me. You taught me how to be a half and a whole at the same time – in bending and in other aspects of life.

'I don't understand? What ran the world before there was an Avatar?' you have asked father.

'Tui and La' he replied 'one shall always be victorious over the other, and so it was.'

'Balance!' you've shouted. 'There was balance!'

He hadn't understood what it ment for us. Or had he? Maybe all the stories of light conquering darkness were a hint of our inevitable fate – we would grow apart. 

So we decided to be a shadow of each other – there would be no victory! If I were to fall, I would pull you along with me and I knew that you would do the same. We've made that promise a long ago while we had snowflakes tangled in our eyelashes.

There was only one moment when I considered doing so.

'Balance!' you've shouted. 'There must be balance!'

'This era is rotten.' father assured us. 'The wrong side of the coin has prevailed. and it is on me to flip it!'

He tore the strings out of the world's belly, and played puppeteer. 

We both witnessed the ending of it. A chaos that no living creature – spirit or human – has ever seen resulted with the Avatar's glorious victory. 

'There's balance.' Korra had said.

I've looked you in the eye – the Avatar had merely flipped the coin. Sometimes I wonder if we are the only forces on Earth that truly coexist.

A new world is growing from the roots of the old one. 'It's unfamiliar.' I've said, and you observed the dawn of the new era with that slightest hint of a smile on your lips 'Yes, but wouldn't it be fun to discover what pulls its strings?'

There was light.  
.  
fin.  
.


End file.
